


we come back a little easier

by strawberry_sky



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: (sort of), Character Study, Episode 87 Spoilers, Gen, Parallels, Suicidal Ideation, anyway if you think about it everyone got freed in episode 87, canon temporary death, gratuitous use of commas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-08
Updated: 2019-12-08
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:47:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21714805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strawberry_sky/pseuds/strawberry_sky
Summary: Ganex. Jourrael. Yasha. An imprisonment, a quest, and some sort of release.~~"it's what he would call his...unstoppable family.""why were you unstoppable?""well I...I think we can die, and come back a little bit easier than other people."(Yasha and Nott, episode 87)
Relationships: The Mighty Nein & Yasha
Comments: 5
Kudos: 44





	we come back a little easier

**Author's Note:**

> i haven't even finished episode 87 but i got to the quote that's in the title and i couldn't think about anything else until I wrote this down. the Laughing Hand's backstory is so sad and fucked up, and the Inevitable End is such a fascinating character, and I love Yasha more than I can contain.  
> find me at drinkingdeadpeopletea.tumblr.com <3

He used to be a hero.

He used to be a warrior, sword in his hand and courage of the gods in his heart. He used to be a leader, with armies of men and women who followed him, trusted him, let him lead them into battle for the good of everyone who had ever been hurt by the cruel hands of the Crawling King. They’d all had a quest, a purpose, something that kept their hearts beating through long nights and hard battles. But it had been his quest first. His quest that he shared with the others, as the leader, as the hero they all looked to. His quest, delivered in stirring speeches before an army, in quiet pledges around the campfire, in prayers and oaths to whoever would lend him strength: Kill the Crawling King, or die trying. 

There had been hope, and there had been honor, and there had been swords and steel and blood.

And then there had been only failure. 

Failure even to die trying, failure even to join his brothers and sisters in arms in the lands beyond, failure to send his own sword through his own heart when it was clear all hope was lost. There was only snakelike limbs erupting from the blood-soaked battlefield and dragging him below, twisting him, turning him, binding him. There was only the feeling of his ribs splintered as his own heart was ripped still-beating from his chest. Only the laughter of his enemy echoing around him as he screamed and bled and called for death and found no reply.

Ironic, wasn’t it, to fall like this. To live a life ready to die in battle and to instead become undying. To swear strength and unity and to find yourself alone, trapped in the kind of darkness and pain from which there is no escape. 

After a time, and a time, and an even longer time, he couldn’t scream. He couldn’t pray.

He could only laugh. 

And laugh, and laugh, and laugh, bitter and broken, corrupted and corrupting. Undying Chosen of the Crawling King, that was him. Slave of the god of slavers. It was _funny_. How could anyone not see how that was _funny_.

Even funnier, now, to find himself pulled from his tomb to be slave to a half-devil who is himself slave to forces he doesn’t even understand. Even funnier to die and die and die again and still be undying. He _laughs,_ and _laughs_ , as he is dragged across the continent, through jungles and libraries and other things he barely has words for. He _laughs_ as out of nowhere he is weakened. There is no explanation. He wouldn’t ask for one. 

And then he is in a church, a church of a god he may have known at some time beyond knowing. A church with shattered windows, crawling with demons. He is laughing--

and then he is burning. And this has happened before, but it’s _different_ , somehow, this time, he can feel it, and some deep long-lost part of his soul feels the most profound relief. 

The hero laughs, once more. And then he is ashes at last.

~~

She used to be an assassin.

She used to deal death and poison like it was nothing, like it was easy. “Inevitable,” they called her, and she revelled in it, rolled the name around on her tongue. Inevitable. Unstoppable. She always gets you in the end. She serves the Queen of Spiders, loves the Queen of Spiders. She serves the King of Hell only to please her mistress. She appears out of thin air, she finds you wherever you are, she licks your blood of her blade and she _loves_ it. 

Kill her? Let them try. They stuck her with swords, burned her with holy magic. They sliced her head from her body and tore her heart from her chest and buried them in separate places and still she is inevitable. 

It’s cruel, then, that it is not her mistress who comes to put her back together. It is this half-devil, this childish fiend who does not even know what he is doing or who he serves. But he has some sway over her, _her,_ who even the gods feared once upon a time. She is killed, over and over again, and she keeps coming back, as she always will until her mistress’s mission is completed. No matter that in this moment her mistress does not seem to hear her frustrated silent cries. She follows Obann’s whims and terrorizes his enemies and resents every second.

And then he is killed by the dark haired one he was trying to control, and she revels in it. Let him become a writhing mass of refuse and slime. Such is the fate of one who fails their master.

She is halfway up the stairs, out of the cathedral, back to her mistress, when she pauses. The black-sludge-thing that was her captor has swallowed one of its enemies and gravely injured the others. It could win. It could _live_. 

She slides into the darkness and she curls her fingers around the hilt of her blade and she is home. _All for you, mistress, all for you_. She lunges out and slices the creature exactly where she needs to to take it apart. She uses the position of the others to her advantage, attacks and attacks and fades away again, and when the creature is barely clinging to this plane she slices through the last few fiendish tendons and her captor falls shredded at her feet, and she smiles. 

The assassin does her job, because of course she does. Inevitable. She always was. She is, still, as she becomes one with the shadows again. 

~~

She used to be a lover.

She used to be a lover, and beloved. She used to be a friend. She used to be part of a tribe, part of a circus, part of a group of talented misfits. She used to be a warrior, too, but that was always second to everything else. 

She’s not sure she’s ever been free. With Zuala, perhaps, for a little while. But she has been a slave to her past, to her mistakes and her cowardice and the chains in her memory, ever since. 

It almost makes sense, when two words from Obann are enough to break her. She has never been free. 

She watches from behind her own eyes as she brings her sword down on the people she loves, sees the fury and betrayal in Fjord’s eyes and knows she deserves it, sees the desperation in Jester’s and Nott’s as they try to reach for her and is glad the door shuts before she can hurt them any more. 

She raises her own tormentor, she follows him everywhere. In her mind, she screams and sobs and calls to the Storm Lord, prays for a miracle every time she sees a cloud and hears no thunder and cannot even summon the strength to be angry. 

She dies, and she dies, and she dies. And for brief moments in the world beyond the world she feels like she can breathe again. There is thunder there, low and distant and rumbling. There is _something_. But every time, her heart is forced to beat again, and it takes all the willpower she’s ever had to even cry. Not enough. It’s not enough. 

Her feet bring her to a cathedral with shattered windows, and her friends are there, and in her mind she is _screaming_. Screaming at them to go, to run, or at least to finish it quickly. To finish her quickly, and let it end. Let it end, she begs as she drives her sword into Beau’s chest and watches the blood bubble around the gash. Let it end, she prays, thankful, as she turns to face Fjord and feels his the full force of his furious magic impact her chest. Let it _end._

And then seemingly out of nowhere there is a bolt of divine magic, and pain at the back of her neck, and a crack of thunder, and she falls to her knees and _screams_ as all the chains break at once and the storm rushes in through broken windows and all is lightning and fire and _relief_. 

They all are alive. Against all odds, they are all alive, and they hug her and do not shun her and they walk with her down, deeper, and her friends help her finish it. She rips the wings off Obann, sends her sword through his back and it doesn’t make up for all he has done and used her to do but it’s a start. They kill him, and they kill him again, and they all walk, together, up and up and _out_ . And she is with them, again. And she is loved, and she loves, and she is _free_.

Yasha steps outside the cathedral, and the rain is on her face, slowly washing the blood away.


End file.
